[Vision2020] Economist Rankings of the World's Greatest

[g. crabtree]

"Um. It's virtually impossible to commit fraud with an EBT card without
the collusion of a supermarket. Food stamps are no longer in a form
where they're independently transferable. Fun fact: the US government
now spends more money per year on welfare fraud prevention than they
have ever lost per year to welfare fraud."

What would stop me from telling my friend/neighbor/co-conspirator that I would be happy to do their shopping for them. They give me cash, I purchase the items with my card. Seems pretty easy to me. I doubt that there is much that is factual in your "fun fact," but assuming you are correct it would simply be another reason to leave matters such as these to the private sector to be run at the local level.

When I donate to a privately run local food bank I know that my donation will go 100% to feeding someone who is hungry, barring their taking the banks largess and selling it on the street corner, a fairly unlikely scenario. No money is wasted on bloated administration or bureaucratic paper shuffling. In a government run program I would be surprised if for every tax dollar spent ten cents worth of food makes it to the unfortunate.

A quick phone call to our local food bank and a brief conversation with its director informs me that the "food banks frequently run out of food" answer to my question is nonsense, at least here in Latah county. I was told that since the banks inception such a thing has never happened.

Lets drag this back to the core of the question instead of arguing the peripheral issues. What is it about a food bank that is shameful?

g


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andreas Schou" <ophite at gmail.com>
To: "g. crabtree" <jampot at roadrunner.com>
Cc: "Dave" <tiedye at turbonet.com>; "vision2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 1:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Economist Rankings of the World's Greatest


> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 1:00 PM, g. crabtree <jampot at roadrunner.com> wrote:
>>  It is much easier to commit fraud with food stamps.
> 
> Um. It's virtually impossible to commit fraud with an EBT card without
> the collusion of a supermarket. Food stamps are no longer in a form
> where they're independently transferrable. Fun fact: the US government
> now spends more money per year on welfare fraud prevention than they
> have ever lost per year to welfare fraud.
> 
>> In addition, what is it about food stamps that make them less "shameful" then utilizing a > food bank?
> 
>> What makes them better?
> 
> Reliability? Food banks frequently run out of food.
> 
>> g
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Dave" <tiedye at turbonet.com>
>> To: "vision2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 11:50 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Economist Rankings of the World's Greatest
>>
>>
>>> How about food stamps?
>>>
>>> Dave
>>>
>>>
>>> g. crabtree wrote:
>>>> Spoken like a man who can't come up with a coherent answer for a rather
>>>> straight forward question.
>>>>
>>>> "Just what mechanism for assistance do you envision that an "affluent and
>>>> technologically advanced" nation might come up with that would be less
>>>> shameful?"
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps you simply were confused by my presentation. I'll try again.
>>>>
>>>> Privately operated food banks efficiently provide a needed service. How
>>>> do
>>>> you think it could be done better?
>>>>
>>>> g
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Windows, OSX, or Linux is the same choice as:
>>> McDonalds, Burger King, or a (real) Co-Op.
>>>
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>>
>>
>> =======================================================
>>  List services made available by First Step Internet,
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>
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